The mainstream media — that is, the liberal media — share all the views and characteristics of the Left. Among these is the Left’s view of truth. There are honest individuals with left-wing views and dishonest individuals on the right. But truth is not a leftist value. Everything the Left believes in is more important than truth — social justice, economic equality, reducing carbon emissions, expanding the power of the state, battling sexism, homophobia, Islamophobia, racism, and above all of these, destroying its conservative opposition.

The media’s coverage of President Barack Obama’s nomination of Judge Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court should serve as one of the most blatant examples of both the left-wing orientation of the news media and their willingness to play with truth.

On March 16, the day after Garland’s nomination, every major mainstream news outlet, print and electronic, depicted the judge as a “centrist.”

Take the Los Angeles Times’ front page “news analysis,” for example. After describing the judge as moderate and centrist, the Times reporter writes:

“If the late Justice Antonin Scalia, a staunch conservative, is replaced by a moderate-to-liberal Justice Garland, the court would tip to the left on several key issues, like abortion, affirmative action, the death penalty, gun control, campaign spending, immigration and environmental protection.”

In other words, the very same author who describes Judge Garland as centrist notes that Garland votes Left on essentially every major issue confronting the nation and the Supreme Court.

The very same day the New York Times led by calling Garland is a centrist, it published an article on the nomination in which it noted that, “If Judge Garland is confirmed, he could tip the ideological balance to create the most liberal Supreme Court in 50 years.”

Moreover, in reviewing Garland’s decisions, the piece placed Judge Garland to the left of Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan, way to the left of Justice Stephen Breyer, and minimally to the right of Justices Sotomayor and Ginsburg.

By their own accounts, the liberal media lied in describing Garland as a centrist.

In a column in the Wall Street Journal, Juanita Duggan, president and CEO of the National Federation of Independent Business, writes that Garland is so anti-small business and so pro-big labor, that, “This is the first time in the NFIB’s 73-year history that we will weigh in on a Supreme Court nominee.”

She explains, for example, that, “In 16 major labor decisions of Judge Garland’s that we examined, he ruled 16-0 in favor of the NLRB [National Labor Relations Board].”

Elsewhere in the Journal, the editorial board wrote of Garland:

“We can’t think of a single issue that has divided the Court on which Mr. Garland would reliably vote differently from the four liberal Justices already on the bench.”

And this: “Scotusblog’s Tom Goldstein points out that Mr. Garland has strong views on agency deference” and “in a dozen close cases in which the court divided, he sided with the [EPA] every time.”

And finally (from Scotusblog): “Judge Garland would be a reliable fifth vote on all of these legal issues.”

Those issues? All the fundamental issues that divide Left from Right.

So, the entire Left is lying about Judge Garland, who, for the record, seems like a truly decent man who possesses a first-class mind. They do so because getting a fifth left-wing vote and weakening the Republicans are far more important than truth.

And, believe it or not, there is an even worse lesson here, namely the media’s effectiveness in saturating society with its mendacious version of reality. Unless an American makes the effort to study the issue — and most do not — they take the news media’s version as truth. The terrible lesson — affirmed time and time again since the 1960s — is that a free society can experience brainwashing as effectively as a totalitarian state.